im 



BOSTON UNIVERSITY BULLETIN 



VOLUME II NOVEMBER, 1913 No. 6, PART ,1 



BOSTON UNIVERSITY 



AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

EDUCATION 

IN THE BIRTH- YEAR OF 

BOSTON UNIVERSITY 



BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 

PUBLISHED BIMONTHLY BY BOSTON UNIVERSITY 
688 BOYLSTON STREET 



Entered as Second-Class Matter at the Post Office, Boston, Massachusetts 

ttowgraph 



DIRECTORY OF OFFICERS 

LEMUEL H. MURLIN, LL.D. 

PRESIDKNT OF THE UNIVERSITY 

688 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. 
HON. JOHN L. BATES, LL.D. 

PRESIDENT OP THE CORPORATION 

934 Tremont Building, Boston, Mass. 
SILAS PEIRCE 

TREASURER OF THE UNIVERSITY 

688 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. 
WILLIAM MARSHALL WARREN, Ph.D. 

DEAN OF THE COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS 

688 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. 

F. SPENCER BALDWIN, Ph.D., R. P. D., Dean 
EVERETT WILLIAM LORD, A. M„ Associate Dean 

THE COLLEGE OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 

688 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. 
LAURESS J. BIRNEY, D.D. 

DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 

72 Mt. Vernon Street, Boston, Mass. 
HOMER ALBERS, A.M., LL.B. 

DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF LAW 

11 Ashburtbn Place, Boston, Mass. 
JOHN P. SUTHERLAND, M.D. 

DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE 

1 East Concord Street, Boston, Mass. 
WILLIAM E. HUNTINGTON, Ph.D., LL.D. 

DEAN OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL 

688 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. 



Ciis 

The University 

DEC 15 1313 



AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

EDUCATION 

IN THE BIRTH-YEAR OF 

BOSTON UNIVERSITY 



BY 

WILLIAM FAIRFIELD WARREN, Ph.D., LL.D., S.T.D. 

President Emeritus 



WILLIAM FAIRFIELD WARREN 

Born at Williamsburg, Mass., March 13, 1833; son of Mather 
and Anne Miller (Fairfield) Warren; A. B. Wesleyan University, 
1853; Andover Theol. Sem., 1854-56; U. of Berlin, 1856-57; 
U. of Halle, 1857-58; (S. T. D. Ohio Wesleyan, 1862; LL.D. 
Wesleyan, 18 74) ; married Harriet Cornelia Merrick of Wilbraham, 
Mass., April 14, 1861. Ordained M. E. Ministry 1855; professor 
systematic theology in Mission Inst., Bremen, Germany (which 
later became Martin Inst., Frankfort), 1860-66; acting president 
Boston Theological Seminary, 1866-73; president Boston Uni- 
versity, 1873-1903; professor comparative theology and phil- 
osophy of religion since 1873; member Royal Asiatic Society, 
American Oriental Society; Author: The True Key to Ancient 
Cosmology, 1882: Paradise Found — the Cradle of the Human 
Race at the North Pole, 1885; the Quest of the Perfect Religion, 
1886 (also editions in Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and German); 
In the Footsteps of Arminius, 1888; The Story of Gottlieb, 
1890 (translated in Arabic and German) ; Constitutional Law 
Questions in the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1894; The re- 
ligions of the World and the World-Religion, 1900; The Earliest 
Cosmologies — The Universe in the Thought of the Ancient 
Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, etc., 1909; Editorial contrib- 
utor to Deutsche Literaturzeitung, Leipzig, Babylonian and 
Oriental Record, London, Journal American Oriental Society, 
and other learned periodicals. 

Club: University. 

Home: 131 Davis Avenue, Brookline, Mass. 

Office: 72 Mt. Vernon Street, Boston. 



AMERICAN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN THE 
BIRTH- YEAR OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY 

The motives which led to the founding of Boston University 
can never be rightly appreciated nor its early plans correctly esti- 
mated without an understanding of the quality of American uni- 
versity education in the year 1869. At this day few persons 
have any adequate idea of the need then existing in New England, 
and in the country at large, for new resources and for new leader- 
ship in the whole range of liberal and professional study. There 
were then in the United States but two institutions maintaining 
the four regular university faculties of divinity, law, medicine 
and the liberal arts. These, of course, were Harvard and Yale. 
The latter of these had only 17 students in its law department, 
23 in its medical and 25 in its theological. Harvard in its divinity 
department was yet weaker, having but 19 students, though 
stronger in the law and medical schools, which had 138 and 308 
respectively. In both institutions the so called academic de- 
partment was the only one respectably housed and equipped. 
Indeed, not until eighteen years later, in January, 1867, did 
"Yale College" obtain from the legislature of Connecticut the 
right to call itself Yale University; and to this day the strictly 
legal title of the Harvard corporation is "The President and 
Fellows of Harvard College," which title is regularly used in the 
official reports of the president and treasurer. One of the most 
eminent of educational authorities for the period, Daniel Coit 
Gilman, says: "In the middle of the century the word university 
was cautiously used in Cambridge and New Haven. ... To 
speak of 'our university' savored of pretense in those old 
colleges." 

In the liberal arts the instruction in both institutions was 
creditable, although elective studies were almost unknown and 
little regard was had to varying individual needs or aims in the 
student body. In neither college was there as yet a professorship 

3 



for the German language and literature, nor indeed was there one 
whose occupant was to give his whole attention to French, or to 
any other modern language. Even in history, philosophy, and 
the natural sciences, the offered courses, compared with those of 
today, were meager, and to a notable extent elementary. 

In the range of professional education the state of things was 
far worse. The theological seminaries of the country were mostly 
young and as yet struggling for recognition. The strongest of them 
were unrelated to the schools for other professions. Their pro- 
fessors were few and the students poorly qualified for their work. 
In Harvard not one in four of its nineteen students of divinity 
had had a collegiate training. A decade earlier the corporation, 
after years of deliberation, definitely voted to discontinue its 
feeble divinity school as a department of the university, and se- 
cured from the legislature an enabling act looking toward this 
end. An extremely small percentage of the churches in the 
United States had ministers who had ever seen the inside of 
any school of theology. Even the religious periodicals seldom 
had for editors men who had enjoyed a training in theology. It 
would be difficult to name a half dozen of our biblical scholars of 
the period whose works were read or known beyond the Atlantic. 
The need for a new ideal and for new appliances was exigent. 

The condition of the law schools of the land was even more 
discreditable than that of the schools of divinity. These latter 
had as a rule a course of instruction of three years, and two or 
more professors giving their whole time to the work. Most of the 
law schools on the contrary had a course of twenty or thirty weeks 
only, and in place of full-time teachers only busy law practi- 
tioners, preoccupied with their ordinary duties in office or court. 
At Harvard only half of the courses were given in one year, the 
other half being reserved for the year following. This arrange- 
ment was, of course, economical, but it was fatal to any discrim- 
ination between fundamental and other studies and to an ordi- 
nary progress from the one group to the other. "Which half 
the student should take first was determined by the accident of 
his entering in an odd or even year." Even so, a residence of 
only eighteen months was required. Furthermore, the circular 
of both schools, the Harvard and the Yale, announced year after 
year: "No examination, nor any particular course of study is 
necessary for admission." At Yale, in the early fifties, the law 
school had a faculty consisting of two teachers, Governor Dutton 

4 



and a colleague; but on the death of the colleague in 1855 
Governor Dutton "conducted its affairs without assistance until 
his death in 1869." This is the statement of Francis Wayland, 
later an ornament and historian of the school. At Harvard, as 
President Eliot has often stated, there was at this time no ex- 
amination for admission to the law school, none for promotion 
from term to term, and none for graduation. The only thing 
obligatory was the prompt payment of the fees for one school 
year and a half. Such was the easy process by which the degree 
of bachelor of laws was then earned. 

What shall be said of American medical schools of the same 
date? Let an expert answer. The following statements are 
from an article on medical education in Munroe's Encyclopedia 
of Education, and they relate to the period we are here studying: 
"The schools were thus nothing more than money-making ven- 
tures unrestrained by law. A school that began in October 
would graduate a class the next spring. No educational re- 
quirement was made for entrance. Any applicant who could 
pay his fees was accepted. Against these demoralizing con- 
ditions little progress was made until the early eighties." (Vol. 
iv. 178.) 

Both in Cambridge and in New Haven the medical school was 
not so much the creation of the institution now known as the 
university as it was of the medical practitioners in the neighbor- 
hood organized into a professional society. Even their original 
names show this. In 1869, and for some time thereafter, the 
name "Massachusetts Medical College" still lingered in the 
Harvard catalogue. In the year 1880 Professor Oliver Wendell 
Holmes wrote: — "It is only in recent times — perhaps within 
twenty-five years — that the institution has been called the 
Harvard Medical School." Not until the charter changes of 
1879 did the New Haven school receive the name "The Medical 
Department of Yale College." Indeed, it was not until 1884 
that the Yale College Corporation acquired more than one-half 
control in the administration of the school, the other half having 
been retained and exercised from the beginning by the Con- 
necticut Medical Society.* Not until 1879, ten years after the 
founding of Boston University, were the medical students at 
Yale "required to attend any full college year." (President 

* The Harvard Divinity School had a similar origin, and from 1816 to 1830 it was tinder 
the joint supervision and control of the "Society for Promoting Theological Education in Har- 
vard University " and the Harvard College Corporation. 

5 



Porter.) In both schools the physician teachers fixed and di- 
vided among themselves the revenue obtained from the students' 
fees. Even at ancient Harvard less than one-half of the students 
possessed a college training. 

Such is a glimpse of the educational situation in 1869. No 
wonder that at the annual meeting of the National Teachers' 
Association, held in Cleveland, in August, 1870, Dr. J. W. Hoyt, 
reporting as chairman of a Committee appointed by the same 
body the previous year, pronounced the condition of higher edu- 
cation in the United States "absolutely deplorable." He added 
as " a statement no well informed citizen will venture to deny," 
"We have as yet no real approach to a real university."* 

As to provision for the higher education of women at the date 
here under consideration there was in all New England not one 
college of liberal arts to which women could resort, either for 
sharing the privileges provided for their brothers, or to be in- 
structed in a collegiate community of their own. The school sys- 
tem of Boston had no provision for so much as a preparation of 
girls for college. The old-fashioned private "finishing school" was 
supposed to be the all-sufficient provision for the daughters of 
the wealthy; the town academy or select school, the crowning 
privilege to which their less favored sisters ought to aspire. 
Apart from certain hopeful beginnings of better things in Ohio, 
the same dearth prevailed throughout the country. The Uni- 
versity of Michigan did not admit women until 1870. Even 
Oberlin in her theological department discriminated against 
women and could offer nothing in law or in medicine. It 
was left to Boston University to be the first in the world's his- 
tory to open to men and women on equal terms, not only the en- 
tire circle of the liberal arts, but also at the same time the entire 
circle of the post-collegiate professional schools. (Kiddle and 
Schem, Cyclopedia of Education, p. 148.) 

One peculiarity of the university life of the New England of 
1869 is seldom mentioned by historians and can be mentally 
pictured by men of the present day only by protracted effort. 
In their inmost nature and function Harvard and Yale were two 
theologically diverse Congregational Churches engaged in teach- 
ing and learning. Each had its legally adopted "Creed and 
Covenant." In each the men who constituted the Corporation 
were, as in other churches, the trustees of the property used, and 

* See Report of the United States Commissioner of Education, 1870, p. 419. 

6 



as such provided the place of worship, Cared for the lighting, 
heating, repairs, etc. The members of the faculty with their 
families made up the relatively permanent resident body of the 
church's membership. Students bringing from their home pas- 
tors letters of church membership were received into the college 
church precisely as they would have been into any other of the 
corresponding Congregational variety, Unitarian or Othodox^ 
in Cambridge or New Haven. The President (or other Faculty 
member) , officiating as pastor and aided by lay deacons, admin- 
istered the sacrament of the Lord's Supper at stated times ac- 
cording to the custom of the old time New England churches> 
the laity remaining in their seats. To students closing their 
connection with the college the president or pastor gave letters 
of dismission and recommendation to other churches of the same 
faith and order. Amherst College, many years younger, was not 
considered "fully organized" until it had a formally adopted 
"Creed and Covenant," an ordained minister as pastor, and a 
suitable number of lay deacons. (Tyler's History, p. 194.) 
Even the officers and students of the Andover Theological Sem- 
inary were organized into a church and had a creed and covenant 
and a pastoral service of their own. 

The chief differences between these Harvard and Yale churches 
and the corresponding variety in the cities where they were situ- 
ated were, (1) the necessarily fluent make-up of their transient 
undergraduate membership; (2) their maintenance of daily as 
well as Sunday worship ; and (3) the rules respecting attendance 
on the daily and weekly worship. Under these rules every stu- 
dent, whether a member of the college church or not, was held 
to regular chapel attendance daily, as well as to the Sunday ser- 
vices, and this under academic, instead of ecclesiastical, penalties. 
Now whatever one may say in commendation of the New 
England college church in its ideal, or in recognition of its accom- 
plished personal, social, or denominational service in former days, 
there was certainly one great infelicity inseparable from it. That 
infelicity was that no student conscientiously debarred from ac- 
cepting the particular "Creed and Covenant" of his college could 
ever feel that in the eyes of his instructors his status in the aca- 
demic community was really normal. He could not hope to be 
in their eyes a persona altogether grata. However sincere and 
consistent he might be in his own religious life, he was a Dis- 
senter in the presence of an Established Church and had to ac- 

7 



cept the disabilities of a Dissenter. Harvard disbanded its church 
early in the eighties; but in Yale the college church still lives on, 
though at present no longer reported annually in the Congrega- 
tional Year Book. The churches in Amherst College, Williams 
and Dartmouth are still reported; and at last accounts the senior 
class at Williams, under the tutelage of the president, was each 
year conducted through that palladium of Calvinistic Orthodoxy, 
the Westminster Catechism. In 1869, in Harvard, despite the 
wishes of many of her noble representatives, direct and indirect 
influences were freely employed to win students to the Unitarian 
Communion, while in Yale like influences were at work to win to 
the Orthodox Congregational fellowship. 

In the light of the foregoing it is easy to see why truly intelli- 
gent friends of the higher education in 1869 believed that the 
time had come for a new university and why the Legislature of 
Massachusetts with great unanimity incorporated it. In the 
whole Commonwealth there was not one college of liberal arts 
which in its rules and administration was free from inherited dis- 
criminations with respect to religious creeds. There was not one 
which opened the higher education to women. There was not 
one school of law or of medicine which was not thoroughly un- 
worthy of so enlightened and just a Commonwealth. Thus at 
its birth Boston University faced great opportunities and felt the 
inspiration of a call to leadership. 

Fortunately the Civil War was over and the educational 
forces of the country were now organizing and co-operating in a 
manner . more effective than ever before. Financial resources 
vastly in excess of any previously possessed or even hoped for 
speedily became available. Men of wide vision and rare execu- 
tive ability appeared in unanticipated numbers East and West. 
Every grade and form of education in America, from lowest to 
highest, felt a new access^of life. The fifty years following 1869 
can never cease to have significance in the history of American 
institutions of learning. Harvard and Yale became for the first 
time true universities. The Johns Hopkins, the Leland Stanford 
and the University of Chicago came into being with means ade- 
quate to new and costly experiments. The state universities 
began to win students by the thousands and appropriations by 
the hundred thousand. One institution, the Military Academy 
at West Point, came at the close of the period to command a 
revenue of two million dollars in one year. Among American 

8 



Universities, however, despite the destruction of its endowment 
in the great fire of 1872, Boston University remains historic by- 
reason of the following among other notable particulars: 

1. Its chief founder, Isaac Rich, devoted to it a fortune larger 
than had ever been given at that date by any one American 
citizen for the promotion of the higher education. He thus 
stimulated the public spirit which in its manifestations in recent 
years has amazed the Old World. 

2. Its plan of organization was at the time new and was 
recognized as original and valuable advance over the distinc- 
tively English and the distinctly German type, securing at the 
same time the advantages of each. (See George Gary Bush, 
History of Higher Education in Massachusetts, pp. 341 ff., pub- 
lished by the United States Bureau of Education.) 

3. In its early negotiations and agreements with the Na- 
tional University of Athens and Royal University of Rome it 
was the first in all history to point out and to arrange for secur- 
ing the advantages of university co-operation on an interconti- 
nental scale. Today's arrangements for exchanges between 
American professors and those of Germany and France, as also 
the establishment of the American schools of Archaeology in 
Athens and Rome, were due in a measure not yet fully recognized 
to Boston University's initiative in the early seventies. (See 
Thirteenth Annual Report of the President, pp. 5-17. Uni- 
versity Year Book, vol. ii, pp. 17-23. Bostonia for January, 
1903. Also Boston — Athens — Rome. A Documentary History 
of the Earliest Experiment in University Reciprocity on the 
International Scale.) 

4. As already noted, this university, without waiting for 
the pressure of public sentiment from without, was the first in 
the world to lift every traditional scholastic bar and ban against 
women as women. It was the first in America to confer upon a 
woman — Helen Magill, later wife of President White of Cornell 
University, American Ambassador to Germany — the degree of 
Doctor of Philosophy. Upon the gifted Anna Oliver, A.B., the 
University also conferred what is believed to have been the first 
degree in theology ever won in course, or in any way, by a 
woman. 

5. It has never conferred an honorary degree. 

6. It was the first university in America to present with 
suitable entrance requirements a three years' graded course in 

9 



medicine, and to require its completion in residence. Later it 
was also the first to require a four years' course. 

7. It was the first institution in America to present and to 
require the mastery of a graded course in law with suitable en- 
trance requirements. For some years it was the only one main- 
taining three years' course of instruction in this field. 

8. Its academic faculty was the first in America to be made 
up exclusively of professors who had pursued post graduate 
studies in Europe. At one time in the eighties its requirements 
for admission to the College of Liberal Arts included successful 
examinations in four languages besides English. This advanced 
standard was maintained until the New England colleges agreed 
to unite in an effort to fix for all of them uniform entrance re- 
quirements. 

9. The School of Theology was the first in the country to 
present regular courses of lectures by eminent scholars represent- 
ing different religious denominations. Also the first to estab- 
lish a professorship for the study of all religions. Also the first 
to make the theory, history, and present state of Christian 
Missions, studies required for graduation. (See New Schaff- 
Herzog Encyclopedia, vol. XI, pp. 365 f.) 

10. Despite all financial disasters and drawbacks it gave 
such impulse to reform in professional education that already in 
the early seventies it led both Harvard and Yale in the number 
and the scholastic standing of its students in the professional de- 
partments. In the third annual report of the President it was 
statistically shown : — 

(1) That last year (1874-75) the number of professional stu- 
dents in Boston University was 42 more than in Harvard, and 
197 more than in Yale. 

(2) That, counting all departments, the number of tributary 
collegiate and professional institutions was the same as in Har- 
vard, and five more than in Yale. 

(3) That, counting the entire membership of the University, its 
percentage of graduate students was six higher than Harvard 
and nine higher than Yale. 

(4) That, counting out the academic elements — three classes 
only having as yet entered — and comparing the remaining de- 
partments common to the three, Boston's percentage of graduate 
students was but two below Yale's, while it was two more than 
double the percentage of Harvard. (Cited in Bush, p. 349.) 

In the year 1879 the University closed its first decade of his- 
tory. Some indication of the impression it had made upon the 

10 



country is given in the annual report of the United States Com- 
missioner of Education for that year. The document begins as 
follows : — 

"The present condition of superior education in this country 
is, on the whole, encouraging to all lovers of sound learning and 
solid culture. Institutions of long establishment are broadening 
and deepening their plans; institutions of recent foundation are 
pushing into the field untrammelled by tradition and full of the 
spirit of the age with which they are solely identified. Promi- 
nent in the highest degree among the latter institutions stands 
Boston University, rich in endowment, imbued with advanced 
ideas of impartial and universal education, brought into closest 
competition with older institutions, and able, by virtue of the 
conditions which have called it into existence, to combine exact 
scholarship and severe tests with elastic methods and eclectic 
courses; it is unquestionably destined to exercise a determining 
influence in the new methods of education which the time de- 
mands, and for which it is expectantly waiting." (Report p. 
cviii.) 

The beneficent effects of Boston University's initiatives on 
the older universities, and on later ones of richer endowment, no 
man has ever estimated or ever can. Under the conditions 
which prevailed many of those initiatives were venturesome in 
the extreme, and some of them impracticable. Enough that all 
of them have played their part in working the profound change 
for the better by which American university education in this 
happy year of grace is distinguished from American university 
education in 1869. 

WILLIAM FAIRFIELD WARREN. 



11 



